Yeah can confirm that I'm another one in the boat of "would drop WA since Facebook owns it", but it's just borderline unviable to do so if I don't want to make my life much more difficult/put extra stress on all my IRL social connections.
It's hard to understand it if you don't live in NL just how extremely omnipresent WhatsApp is. People use it for everything, from casual family chatter to highly serious conversations to quite literally business-related conversations. Not having WA will absolutely result in things like missing crucial information because "we send it in the WhatsApp group" and that of course in turn will be used as a mark against you when you're say, seeking a job.
This occurred before Facebook bought it and their recent T&S change that allows them to use WA usage to improve their algorithms basically was a case of "enjoy being forced to share your data with no recourse". There was tons of social pushback about it but nobody could do anything about it because the app is so entrenched.
I am thoroughly looking forward to the DMA and its impact on WhatsApp.
It's hard to understand it if you don't live in NL just how extremely omnipresent WhatsApp is. People use it for everything, from casual family chatter to highly serious conversations to quite literally business-related conversations. Not having WA will absolutely result in things like missing crucial information because "we send it in the WhatsApp group" and that of course in turn will be used as a mark against you when you're say, seeking a job.
This occurred before Facebook bought it and their recent T&S change that allows them to use WA usage to improve their algorithms basically was a case of "enjoy being forced to share your data with no recourse". There was tons of social pushback about it but nobody could do anything about it because the app is so entrenched.
I am thoroughly looking forward to the DMA and its impact on WhatsApp.